Many protocols in molecular biology involve several iterations of performing a biochemical reaction followed by capture and cleanup of the biochemical reactions. For example, DNA library preparation can involve polishing nucleic acid fragments, A-tailing the polished fragments, and ligating adapters to the A-tailed fragments. Currently, there are few inventions that can perform integrated analysis of any unpurified sample, such as obtaining sequence information from an environmental sample. As such, there is a need in the art for systems that can receive as input an unpurified sample and perform automated sample preparation and analysis to generate laboratory-quality data. Further, biochemical protocols can be improved to facilitate performing such integrated preparation and analyses.
While not necessary, in some cases the invention described herein can use microfluidic components to reduce the amount of samples or reagents required for bioanalytical methods. Such microfluidic components may incorporate different external dimensional form factors, external interfaces, and/or internal fluidic geometries to facilitate performing biochemical protocols. In contrast, many biological and environmental samples are first acquired in volumes far greater than, and incompatible with, the scale of existing microfluidic analytical devices. Thus, some embodiments of the invention provide modular microfluidic components that can be used as components of integrated fluidic systems, and that can interface with effective fluidic communication to preparative modules or methods that operate at a larger scale.